Lock & Key (King & Crown Book 1) Page 2

  Kat thanked them for their arrogance.

  Or perhaps their misplaced trust in power grids.

  Whichever it was…

  As she approached the exit doors, the guard on the right spotted her coming. He alerted his companion with a shout, and they pulled out tasers. Not guns, Kat noted, but tasers. Weapons designed to incapacitate her. Advent 9 didn’t want to lose one of their precious subjects, if they could help it; enough already died during the experiments.

  But Kat wasn’t going down with a few shocks. No, no.

  Either they’d kill her, or she’d escape.

  There was no third option.

  The guard on the right, a tall white man, raised his taser, aiming for Kat. “Hey now, lady. Don’t do anything stupid. Turn around, put your hands behind your head, and we’ll take you back where you belong, okay? This doesn’t have to get ugly.”

  Where she…belonged?

  Was that a joke, or was this man really so callous?

  Kat kept walking.

  The other guard, a shorter black man, started to maneuver around her, so he could attack her from behind. “Look, honey. This isn’t personal. But we can’t let you leave. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

  Kat stopped walking. “Personal?” She rolled that word around on her tongue. “Strange you say that. ‘It isn’t personal.’ For you. But for me? It’s been personal since day one.”

  The guards exchanged glances.

  The white guard shook his head. “Please, we don’t want to hurt you. So just—”

  “If you didn’t want to hurt me”—Kat ran her tongue across her dry bottom lip—“you’d let me leave. Keeping me here means putting me in a position where the doctors will continue to hurt me, torture me, until my body finally gives out. So yes, you do want to hurt me. You’re complicit. Don’t pretend you’re not.” She clenched her fists, her nails sheared too short to even bite into the flesh of her palms. “If I don’t get to sleep at night, neither do you.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” muttered the black guard. “Come on, Gareth, let’s just zap her and drag her back. If they find out we let her get this far in the first place…”

  Gareth waved dismissively at his companion. “She’s in the middle of a test, man. If we shock her, she might die. And if she dies on our watch, we die. Don’t play with fire. We can wrestle her back into her cell.” He lowered his taser, then hesitantly slipped it back into its holster. “In fact, I’ll drag her back myself. You hold your taser on her, just in case. Shoot only as a last resort. How’s that?”

  The black guard gripped his taser hard, considering. “All right. Works for me. Let’s hurry up though. Somebody might come in early—these scientists keep weird hours—and I don’t want them to see us in this situation.”

  “Right.” Gareth stepped forward, reaching for Kat. “Now, sweetheart, don’t make any sudden moves. I don’t want to injure you. Let me cuff your wrists, and then—”

  Kat punched him in the jaw.

  It was a much stronger punch than she should’ve been able to throw, given how exhausted she felt, and the man reeled back, slipped off his feet, and fell flat on his ass. Kat spun on her toes then, one breath in between her punch and her next attack, rounding on the black guard who still had his taser raised. The man, distracted by the sight of his partner sprawled across the floor, didn’t pull the trigger until Kat was less than two feet from him, her knees bent to pounce.

  She launched herself at him a split second before the darts on the end of the taser wires pierced her flesh. Just as the first shocks bit into her muscles, Kat slammed into the guard with her entire body. Her head collided with his chin, her elbows connected with his sternum, her knees plowed into his groin, and the force of her full mass hitting him straight on sent him careening backward. The taser slipped out of his hand, and the electricity running hot through Kat’s body cut out abruptly, before it had enough time to do any real damage.

  They hit the floor together. The man’s head whipped back against the marble, skull splitting on impact, and blood sprayed out from his scalp in a fine mist. Ribs cracked under Kat’s bony arms, the man’s chest collapsing inward. And something gave under her knees too, something soft, bursting open like a popped balloon.

  A warning bell went off in Kat’s head—too strong. Much too strong. She couldn’t be this strong.

  Kat scrambled away from the downed guard, eying his broken body in fright.

  He didn’t get up. He didn’t move.

  “He’s dead,” whispered a sing-song voice next to Kat’s ear. “You killed him, monster girl. You’re exactly what Advent 9 wants you to be. A beast.”

  Kat batted at the air to her left, but made no contact. There was no one there. The voice was inside her head. Her tired mind was still playing tricks on her.

  She cursed under her breath, told herself to concentrate. The nearest exit door was twelve feet to her right. All she had to do was stand up and walk outside—

  The hair on the back of her neck rose.

  Kat peered over her shoulder to see Gareth had now recovered. His jaw was out of alignment, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, and he was unsteady on his feet. But he had enough presence of mind, even injured, to grab his gun from his belt, flick off the safety, and aim it at Kat’s face.

  Her heart skipped a beat. She went rigid, a gasp in her throat. Her mind blanked. Except for one thought…

  Escape or die, she’d promised herself only minutes ago.

  And yet, as the man’s finger curled around the trigger of the pistol, as the trigger started to move, closer and closer to shooting a bullet straight through Kat’s brain and out the other side, she realized she didn’t want to die. Even if Sarah was waiting on the other side, even if that other side was endless fields of golden wheat and infinite happiness, even if all was right in death, even if all was peace…Kat didn’t want to die. She wanted to live first. She wanted to live free.

  In reality, there was only one option.

  Escape.

  Escape.

  Escape!

  A sensation rippled through Kat’s chest that she had never felt before, and rage followed in its wake. Quiet, calm, unadulterated rage.

  Kat’s right hand lifted on its own, as if pulled by a string, and she pointed that hand, palm out, fingers splayed, at the man who was a fraction of a second from shooting her in the head. Almost like her body thought it could block a bullet.

  But in the end, she didn’t touch the bullet. Because the bullet didn’t leave the gun.

  Kat’s hand jerked, a sweeping motion, and the gun flew out of Gareth’s hand, clattering across the marble floor. The guard looked at his empty hand, horror running across his bloody face, and slowly tracked his gaze to the gun lying on the floor twenty feet away.

  Almost like an observer inside her own head, Kat watched, mesmerized, as her fingers snapped twice, a motion Kat wasn’t sure they’d ever made before.

  Gareth flinched at the sound—it broke him from his horrified stupor—and he scrambled to wrench his taser from its holster again. But the moment his fingers made contact with the device, there was a spark that snapped the same way Kat’s fingers had. And in the blink of an eye, that spark grew into a candle-like flame. And in the blink of an eye, that flame grew into a campfire. And in the blink of an eye, that campfire grew into a wicked blaze that raced up Gareth’s sleeves and consumed him whole.

  Kat’s hand fell listlessly to her side. The strange new rage abated.

  She sat on the floor of the lobby of her prison of two years until the man on fire finally stopped screaming. Then, with an odd sort of detachment in her chest, senses hollow, mind blissfully free of any coherent thoughts, Kat stood up, smoothed out her blood-stained hospital gown, turned on her bare toes, and walked out the door. Just like that.

  The sick scent of charred flesh followed her outside, into the windy night beyond, into the green, grassy field that bordered the Advent 9 complex, and all the way ac
ross that field, through a narrow patch of pine trees, to a two-lane road down which Kat began to walk.

  That smell is bitter, Kat thought out of the blue, half an hour later, when her toes were blistered and her skin was sweaty and her mouth was so dry she tasted only copper. When all that remained of that smell was a faint wisp of death clinging to her skin, or perhaps a layer of human ash too thin to see.

  That smell is bitter, but freedom is sweet.

  1

  Liam

  The night the woman fell from the sky, Liam was drinking.

  This wasn’t a surprise to anyone—Liam was always drinking—but tonight, of all nights, he left the bar after a reasonable number of beers and not entirely shitfaced like usual. Later, he’d wonder whether it was “fate” (if such a thing existed), but as he exited Darcy’s at half past nine, all he was wondering was whether he could bluff his way through Ms. Dupree’s inevitable interrogation tomorrow morning. Because the last thing he wanted to do right now was sit in the parking lot of a McDonald’s and watch Ms. Dupree’s cheating scumbag of a husband have a “hot date” with his mistress over burgers and fries and paper napkins.

  If Liam could go back in time, he’d beat his past self over the head with a shovel. What the hell was he thinking—a PI license?

  Past Liam was a fucking moron.

  Ambling away from the bar, Liam headed down the dimly lit sidewalk, noting that another three streetlights along the block had burned out since Monday. Magic was funny like that; sometimes, it wouldn’t hurt a thing, not even the most sensitive tech in all the fancy smartphones and tablets people carried around. But sometimes, other times, angry times, it got so volatile that it could blow out anything that ran on electricity, even basic streetlights.

  Liam paused at the corner of Ahab and Moira, the walk light across the street glowing red. He reached up and flicked the simple stud in his left ear. A spark of his own magic zipped from the metal into his head, and suddenly, his senses grew a hundred times sharper. The hot alcohol in his veins faded to a distant, warm thrum, while his eyes saw farther, his ears heard better, and his taste and smell accounted for everything from the lingering peanut debris on his tongue to the faintest wisp of a woman’s perfume. The night grew colder too, against his skin.

  It’d been a chilly winter in Salem’s Gate, Pennsylvania.

  Not only because of the snow, but also because of the bitter and escalating rivalries among the powerful things that went bump in the night.

  Using his enhanced senses, Liam scanned the southern half of the block, where the busted streetlights were, roughly thirty feet from his position. In the mouth of a narrow alley, he spied a spray of dried blood against the brick exterior of a convenience store. Beneath it, the concrete ground was cracked, several sharp-edged chunks out of place. The remnants of a fight that didn’t end well for somebody.

  With a sniff, Liam inhaled all the scents in the immediate area. Largely human, nondescript, unimportant. A group of vampires—they always smelled like lilac, strangely enough—but they’d passed through only hours ago, judging by the strength of the scent. Too late to have been involved in the day-old alley business. Liam focused harder on the scents that remained. Dogs, birds, squirrels, a few stray cats, and…Ah, there it is. The minty freshness of the fair folk, centered right around the alley of interest.

  Liam flicked his earring again, shutting off the magic enhancements, and turned to face the street crossing just as the walk light flashed to green in the wake of a bent-up Suburban chugging through the intersection. He bit back the bout of nausea that always rumbled in his gut whenever he negated a spell with crummy beer in his belly, adjusted his bunched-up coat, set his shoulders low and back lax, to make his gait look unassuming, and finally crossed the street.

  Faerie business was best left alone, Liam knew from experience. So he sauntered off toward the parking garage where his SUV awaited, looking as harmless and uninterested as physically possible, in order to let the ever-prying eyes of the city’s large faerie population know that he didn’t plan to interfere with whatever ugly crap went down in that alley last night. Faeries were vindictive little shits, but they did no real harm unless provoked. So whoever got the short end of the stick, whoever’s blood was on that wall…Well, Liam could always check the missing persons list later and send an anonymous tip to the police, if he was feeling abnormally righteous while eating his Wheaties in the breakfast nook.

  He arrived at the four-story parking garage, slipped past the boom gate, waved to a parking attendant in the booth, who appeared to be in the middle of a lovely nap, and walked up to the second level, finding his vehicle in the corner spot of Row Q, exactly where he left it. Which wasn’t a surprise. Who the heck would want to steal an eight-year-old Jeep Cherokee with three prominent white lines keyed into the driver’s side?

  Liam dug his keys out of his pocket but hesitated before he hit the button to unlock the doors. He closed his eyes and took a breath, evaluating his balance, coordination, and memory recall. The fact he could accurately judge all three assured him he wasn’t drunk, but he couldn’t be too careful. He’d never earned himself a DUI, but there were times when he should’ve been arrested and only escaped a conviction because the Salem’s Gate police were concerned with more pressing matters than idiot drunk drivers.

  There was an irony there—since Liam used to be a cop.

  He unlocked the door.

  Twenty minutes later, he was pulling into the parking lot of McDonald’s. Or rather, he was pulling into the drive-thru, because all he had to eat at Darcy’s were those damn peanuts, and he wasn’t going to sit here watching adulterous activity for an hour on an empty stomach. He ordered twenty chicken nuggets, extra fries, and one of those ridiculously huge sweet teas. Liam wasn’t really the health nut type (as if the habitual drinking didn’t tip you off).

  After he got his food, he pulled around to a parking spot underneath a sad old tree with drooping branches that at least four people had run into while trying to park. It was tilted at a forty-degree angle. Liam turned the radio on a low volume, arranged his food, and tipped his seat back enough to lounge comfortably while he observed the bright interior of the restaurant, which was busy but not overly so for a Wednesday night.

  Just before he ripped open a pack of sweet and sour sauce to start chowing down, he stopped short and reached over to the glove compartment. He retrieved his fancy DSLR camera, setting it in the passenger seat. Over the past three years, his tenure as a private investigator, Liam had learned that his clients were significantly more impressed with his work if the most solid evidence—naughty pictures of cheating spouses usually—was presented through high-quality pictures.

  Nothing said a job well done like 50.6 megapixels of a cheating husband kissing the other woman.

  At ten o’clock sharp, the persons of interest arrived. Ted Dupree, a local doctor, and Nina Davis, who ran the cake shop on North Lake Avenue, parked six spots down from Liam’s Cherokee, hopped out of Ted’s Audi, and walked hand in hand, laughing all the way, into McDonald’s. Like it was a freaking Vegas wedding chapel instead of the home of a clown mascot. Not that their bizarre behavior bothered Liam that much at this point. He’d been following these assholes around for two weeks, snapping pics of the duo in every cliché cheating scenario imaginable. In a movie theater, making out in the back row. In the park, making out on a bench. In a crummy motel, making out in a bed; Liam left early that time, when the clothes were coming off.

  He was a PI, not a pervert.

  The point was, Ted and Nina would go at it anywhere, no matter how much the food cost or how bad the décor was. They made a game of it, like they had a cheating bucket list, and…

  Liam dropped his chicken nugget back into the box and glanced to his left. Nothing but the parking lot, stained with shimmering oil.

  I felt it. I know I did.

  The telltale ripple of magic in the air, humming like an engine.

  It was strong. It was close.


  Liam set aside his food, opened the console between the front seats, and withdrew his pocketknife with the etched-in extension charm on the blade. The charm lengthened the knife’s area of effectiveness to three feet, instead of its paltry three inches of steel, which made it a virtual sword. It was a handy trick, especially because the knife looked ordinary. The blade extension was created by magic energy, which branched upward from the body of the actual blade, into a physical but transparent protrusion. So unless the wielder flared their magic with too strong a burst, creating an aura, the full area of effectiveness was invisible. You couldn’t see the “real” length of the knife until it cut you, until you stained it with your blood, and by then, it was too late. Because Liam also had an electrical charm carved into the handle of the knife. It discharged on impact.

  All in all, it was a pointy magic shock baton. His own invention.

  He was proud of it—because it’d saved his life more than once. And now it might save him again, if the supernatural being lurking on the shadowy outskirts of the McDonald’s parking lot was, in fact, after his lily-white ass.

  Liam gripped the knife tightly in his right hand, flicked the interior vehicle lights to manual off, cut the radio, and quietly opened the door of the SUV. He slipped into the cool night and dropped to a crouch, slinking his way over to a row of scraggly bushes on the edge of the lot, which separated the restaurant from a squat brick office building next door. After squeezing through the gap between two bushes, and slouching enough to prevent his head from playing peekaboo over the prickly hedge, he continued on toward the far end of the lot, toward the fenced-in dumpster, the source of the magic pulse.

  He didn’t see anyone loitering in the area, but that didn’t mean no one was there. Vampires. Faeries. Magicians. They could all render themselves invisible through veils. And shapeshifters could hide in plain sight, a bird on a branch, a cat in a garbage bag, a squirrel clinging to a piece of bark. Shapeshifters came in all shapes.